They are “liberated from history.”

If you didn’t get a chance to attend Dr. Michelle Abates talk on Wednesday, February 20^th at SDSU’s Love Library, then you missed a great talk on queer futurity and “queer retrosity.” Dr. Abate began her talk, “Out of History: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, the 1980s, and the Reclamation of a Lost Past,” by first situating the novel in queer young adult genre and then in the history at the center of the plot.

The author tells us, “It was hard to be gay in the 80s. It wasn’t safe to be gay in the 80s.” Abate clarifies misconceptions about the AIDS crisis by underscoring America’s response to the many lives lost as the government failed to act. She notes that “AIDS was a pivotal social issue in 1987.” While politicians such as Pat Buchannan blamed the victims of this crisis with judgmental comments, “Those poor homosexuals—they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution,”[1] organizations like ACT UP moved to educated America.

Abate notes that while the AIDS epidemic is a central part of the time in which Sáenz’s novel is set, to make it the focal point opens Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe up to what Sedgwick defines as a “paranoid reading.” Therefore, according to Abate, a reparative reading of Sáenz’s novel surprises us by imagining a more utopian past through what she calls “queer retrosity.” She goes on to say that the novel “upends our preconceptions” and therefore, Ari and Dante are “liberated from history.” 

(KT)

---

[1] https://thinkprogress.org/flashback-buchanan-aids-is-natures-awful-retribution-against-homosexuality-2049a2734cfb/

Join us for “Cinderella Today: Rewriting, Adapting and Translating a Classic Fairy Tale” a talk given by Danielle Teller, Dr. Joseph T. Thomas Jr., and Dr. Audrey Coussy

Please join us on March 4^th at 1:30 pm in San Diego State University’s Scripps Cottage for 

“Cinderella Today: Rewriting, Adapting and Translating a Classic Fairy Tale.”

The talk will begin with Dr. Joseph T. Thomas Jr., professor of children’s and young adult literature and director of the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature, who will talk about the constitutive role that adaptation played from the very origins of Cinderella’s story. Next will be Dr. Audrey Coussy, professor of translation studies and literary translation at McGill University, will talk about her translation of Danielle Teller’s All the Ever Afters: The Untold Story of Cinderalla’s Stepmother (2018), a contemporary and innovative rewriting of Cinderella (translation forthcoming in 2019, published by Denoël/Gallimard). Finally, Danielle Tell will discuss her book in dialogue with Dr. Coussy. This lecture focuses on translation as adaptation and adaptation as a kind of translation. Teller’s text reimagines the 17^th century French fairy tale “Cinderella,” by Charles Perrault.

We hope to see you there!

(KT)

Serious Nonsense in Children’s Literature

         According to Linda Salem in her essay on Edward Gorey’s personal library, “Nonsense evokes discomfort and tension in audiences. Ridiculous, paradoxical, and unpredictable, it is at the same time meaningful and meaningless. It disturbs and tricks readers’ expectations” (232). The genre, then, encourages a reconsideration of the familiar by causing the reader to feel uneasy about the subject of the literature at hand. Dr. Seuss’s cautionary tale, The Butter Battle Book (1984), teaches its readers about tolerance and respect. John Hursh quotes Thomas Fensch: “While [Seuss’s] book received significant criticism when first published, it also received considerable praise. Writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak remarked: “Surprisingly, wonderfully, the case for total disarmament has been brilliantly made by our acknowledged master of nonsense, Dr. Seuss. . . . Only a genius of the ridiculous could possibly deal with the cosmic and lethal madness of the nuclear arms race” (n.p.). By subverting reasoning, the text cautions its readers against immorality.

While Dr. Seuss may have received a balance of criticism for his tolerance and demilitarization message in The Butter Battle Book, Michael Ian Black was accused of being an immature American for his childish nonsense book, A Child’s First Book of Trump (2016), which was meant for adults. Black’s rhymes coupled with Marc Rosenthal’s illustrations are reminiscent of Dr. Seuss’s nonsensical, artistic style. The text, according to the July 5, 2016 New York Times article, was a “. . . perfectly timely parody picture book intended for adults that would be hysterical if it wasn’t so true.” In genuine nonsense form, the piece cautions its readers against sightings of the “Americus Trumpus” (n.p.):

So what shall you do with a Trump running wild?

The answer is all up to you, my dear child.

Run away screaming? Or maybe you fight?

Reason and logic will only incite it.

You can cover your ears or run up a tree,

But the best thing to do is . . . (n.p.)

Adults (the intended audience), however, found the piece immature and indicative of sore “losers.” Kayla Welch commented on the New York Times article on November 7, 2017:

This book is the perfect example of why our country – namely the left – is so immature. I’m a libertarian, I voted as such, and yet I cannot understand this immaturity from people who have the right to vote.

Your side lost, so did mine. Grow up and please do not instill such immaturity in your child. . .

Another commenter, Jason Powell, responded on November 6, 2017 by saying “Written by the haters for the losers. Don’t read this to your kid if you want the child to be an achiever.” The comments these adults make point to several issues, but the question of the child audience is probably easier to consider in such a short discussion. How does one determine the criteria for a child audience? What are the criteria for children’s literature as a genre? Certainly, this text could entertain a child as well as Little Red Riding Hood.

Children know the difference between right and wrong. They know the difference between moral and immoral. In a CNN video published to YouTube on March 4, 2016, some confident children respond to news clips of the “Americus Trumpus.” When Trump complains that a million-dollar loan from his father was not very much, one young person responds mockingly: “It hasn’t been easy for me, but I’m filthy rich.” Another young person responds to Trumps comment about Rosie O’Donnell by saying, “If he’s going to be rude to ladies, he shouldn’t be a president.” Is it not possible, then, that children can handle discussions about complex topics in the literature written for them?

(KT)

Works Cited

Black, Michael Ian, and Marc Rosenthal. A Child's First Book of Trump. First ed., 2016.

"Children react to Donald Trump." https://youtu.be/3DcDdHdImM4. CNN. 4 March 2016.

Clark, Dorothy., and Linda C. Salem. Frontiers in American Children's Literature. 1st unabridged. ed., Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016.

Hursh, John. "Exploring Civil Society Through the Writings of Dr. Seuss: International Law, Armed Conflict, and the Construction of Otherness: A Critical Reading of Dr. Seuss's The Butter Battle Book and a Renewed Call for Global Citizenship." New York Law School Law Review, 58, 617 2013 / 2014. https://advance-lexis-com.libproxy.sdsu.edu/api/document?collection=analytical-materials&id=urn:contentItem:5CFF-JJ30-00CV-20HP-00000-00&context=1516831. Accessed December 9, 2018.

Seuss. The Butter Battle Book. Random House, 1984.